Every Which Way But Schrute
by HalloweenJack138
Summary: Like most of the rest of the world, Dwight and Michael are terrified that Dwight is about to be a father.


_Nothing sounds quite like the 8 0 8!_**  
**

**Coming soon:**

It's the truck-driving, arm-wrestling, beet-growing epic that will rock a generation...

Rainn Wilson in _**Over the Schrute**_

Dwight, flexing a meaty, manly, mass of muscular that the gods have named his arm: When I put my elbow down on that table, I'm not thinking "I'm going to beat this guy..."

He shakes his head.

Dwight: I'm thinking "I'm going to _humiliate _this guy."

Pause.

Dwight: And if anyone knows about humiliation, it's Dwight Schrute.

**----**

When Ryan Howard first met Kelly Kapour, he entered another world.

A world of sensuality...

A world of passion...

A world of crippling nausea.

BJ Novak and Mindy Kaling in _**Purple Pain**_

Ryan, in stark terror: I can't tell you what she did to me... but my body will never be the same.

**----**

Once upon a time, the Underworld was ruled by the beautiful Queen of Gold. She was known for being wise and kind to everyone she met and her council was sought by the gods of the four realms.

Then, one day, her lover ran away from her and her heart became as cold as stone.

Fearing that she would only be hurt again, she buried her heart in the deepest part of an endless labyrinth, and all the world turned to sadness and sorrow as she turned away from her people.

But the people did not lose hope, for it was said that in the world above a boy of great strength and cleverness would one day be born, and that only he could hope to bring Love back to the Queen of Ice.

Steve Carell in _**Jan's Labyrinth**_

Michael: You know, I have been in this labyrinth for days now and... I haven't seen David Bowie, I haven't seen _any_ Muppets...

He shakes his head ruefully.

Michael: Ever get the feeling that you've been cheated?

**----**

_**And Now... Our Feature Presentation...**_

_**----**_

"Were we alone in the Universe? Impossible. Determined to find another form of intelligent life, our best scientists sent the signal deep into space. Our probes passed beyond the Moon and penetrated deep into the very core of Uranus..."

"_Michael_," Angela hissed, spewling venom.

"What?" Michael asked, pulling his head away from her ever-expanding abdomen.

Oscar shook his head in resigned disgust. "For God's sake, Michael, you're talking to a fetus."

----

Michael: To the surprise on many of us in the office, our very own Dwight and Angela are about to be parents.

Thoughtful pause.

Michael: When those Christian girls get pregnant, they stay pregnant.

----

"Dwight asked me to tell a science fiction story," Michael explained, as if that were justification enough.

"It's not appropriate," Angela argued.

"Everything for children has jokes for the grown-ups," Michael countered. "Look at 'South Park'."

Oscar shook his head, for once he was siding with Angela. Neither of them were particularly pleased by this.

"It's not like the kid's going to get the jokes." Michael snorted defensively.

"Wait," Kevin asked with his normal level of confusion, "how could the probes go _into_ a planet?"

"Well, Kevin," Michael explained, "Uranus is one big ball of gases."

"_Michael_!" Angela and Oscar shouted simultaneously.

Kevin smiled. "Awesome."

**---- **

**Episode Twenty: "Every Which Way But Schrute"**

**----**

Dwight: At the this very moment, a new entity is forming inside of Angela. In a few short months, that being is going to burst forth into the world, alive, awake, and hungry...

Pause.

Dwight: It's _exactly_ like the first _Alien_.

----

Dwight K Schrute was not doing at all well lately, even relatively speaking.

The Star Wars Hockey Dream feeling of knowing that his essence had successfully impregnated a woman had faded and the thundering realities of both his impending fatherhood and that horrible implication that avoiding the missionary position was _not_ a practical means of birth control after all had begun to set in.

Dwight wasn't afraid, obviously.

Schrute men simply do _not _get afraid.

Of course, that meant that Dwight had no name for what he _was_ feeling right now, but...

He floated over to Pam's desk, a crumpled, medicine-headed paper ball of self-defeat, and crashed onto her desk to stabilize himself. "Pam, could you do me a favor?" he pleaded, looking up at her with great, cow-like eyes in a massively bloated froggy head.

Her first instinct was, of course, to refuse, but Dwight was so pathetic a specimen that she found herself saying "Sure," out of pure, undiluted pity.

"I need you to take a message and email it to me," he explained. "I'd do it myself, but... this is important. It should to be dictated." And he was tired of those bastards making fun of his proofreading abilities. (As if he could be bothered with trifles like that.)

"Okay," Pam called up the appropriate screen, making sure to CC herself for later use.

Dwight cleared his throat and began speak with a gravity that could shake the planets themselves. "My friends, it is my sad duty today to resign my position as Assistant Administrator for the Mission Caprica Battlestar Galactica Fanfiction Archives. I hope you understand that II do not do this by choice." He paused, fighting back a wave of emotional exhaustion. "I count the citizens of this website among my closest friends and I will miss all of you... except those among you who enjoyed my stories, but didn't take the time to review... I hope _you_ all bleed out in the back of the ambulance." Pam blinked hard. For as long as she had known Dwight, there were still those precious moments when she was still surprised by the level of his insanity. "The tragic circumstances of my situation prevent me continuing with this, my most important of missions, and while I know that no one could ever hope to match my time on this site, I have named my replacement, and I know BoomerMan6969 will do a passable job. Thank you."

Pam turned to face Dwight with a mixture of disgust and revulsion. "Dwight, you aren't dying."

There was a pause.

"_Aren't_ I, Pam?" he replied coldly.

----

Dwight: Schrute men take the responsibilities of fatherhood very seriously. To the exclusion of all else.

Pause.

Dwight: My father used to say to me "Mangelwurzel, my life ended the day you were born."

He shakes his head in mystified awe.

Dwight: He was the greatest man this world has ever known.

----

"They only got married in February and Angela's already so huge she can hardly move," Oscar gaped as he eyed his fellow accountant from behind the safety of the glass. "Even considering how short she was to start with, that kid is going to come out looking like Augustus Gloop."

Jim looked up from his peach iced tea. "You don't honestly think that's a human being in there, do you?" he asked with blank horror.

Oscar cocked his head to the side. "What are you expecting?"

Jim took a long, hard look at Angela before answering. "Nuclear holocaust," he said like a dead fish.

Michael walked into the breakroom with an overblown attempt at subtlety. Never a good sign. "Jim, can I talk to you for a second?"

Jim looked to Oscar for help, but seeing that Michael was clearly in a very difficult place emotionally and desperately in need of any help that could come to him, Oscar opted to sneak out the door as quickly as possible.

For his part, Jim merely cursed himself for never learning how to teleport. "Sure," he said, "what's up?

Michael spent a good minute and half struggling uncomfortably with his chair, which did not bode at all well for the conversation; if Jim was going to survive this one, it would take all of his skills. "After a while," Michael began slowly, as through every word were a very heavy brick and he was playing a very slow game of real-world Tetris, "...a man starts to think about his legacy..." Michael evidently thought this was a good place for a dramatic pause, "...how his name going to survive after he's gone."

"Michael, you're not talking about..." Jim looked him dead in the eyes "...killing the President, are you?"

"What?" Michael started. "No. Of course not!"

"I mean, it makes sense," Jim admitted. "Everyone knows who John Wilkes Booth is, everyone knows who Lee Harvey Oswald is... if you kill the President, everyone will remember the name Michael Gary Scott."

Michael took a moment to consider this statement. "No, that's not what I meant."

"Look, we've all thought about it," Jim shook his head, "but I can't let you go through with it." Jim rested a hand on Michael's shoulder. "The people of this office need you."

"That's not..." Michael squinted his eyes in hostile confusion. "Would you just listen to me, please?"

Jim nodded. With Dwight it would have worked.

----

Michael "Am I jealous of Dwight?"

Thirty-one flavors of pause.

Michael: Of course not. I mean, sure Dwight is about to be a father while I am... still not... but _me_ being jealous of _Dwight_?

He snorts in contempt.

Michael: That's like Don Coyote being jealous of Sancho Panda.

----

Dwight entered the comic shop with an air of mad desperation.

The owner noted this, but gave very little thought to it having seen it many times in the course of his day.

In fact, "mad desperation" was the third highest-ranking state of being to be seen in comic shop patrons, ranking below both "child-like over-exuberance" and "wry self-awareness" and just above "just leave me alone."

"Welcome at the Unknown, _your _comics and games center," he called out anyway.

Dwight ran to him and rested his hands on the other man's shoulders. "Banky, I've got bad news."

"Do I know you?" The clerk asked, not at all comfortable with Dwight touching him in any way.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to attend to the Sunday HeroClix tournaments for a while..." Dwight said, voice rich with remorse. "I'm going to have my hands full for a while."

"Well, they're mainly for the kids, anyway..." the clerk attempted to interject.

Dwight shook his head. "I never thought this day would come, but the years have a way of slipping by -- of changing the world around us..." he cast his eyes to the ground "And, every boy... sooner or later... must put away his **toys**-- and become... a man."

The clerk shook his head. "Sorry, dude."

Dwight merely nodded, choked by the power of his own speech. When he found his voice he turned back to the clerk and asked "Do you have the new 'Buffy Season Eight' for me"

"Yeah," the clerk confirmed, seizing the book out of Dwight's "pull" box and handing it to him.

Dwight eyed the book for a second. "This isn't the variant cover," he hissed.

----

Dwight: Darth Vader spent three whole movies trying to destroy his own spawn.

Just let the thought sit for a moment.

Dwight: I could never relate to that until now.

----

"Creed, you're a father, aren't you?" Michael asked cautiously as he approached the older man.

"Almost certainly," Creed confirmed.

"And how does that make you feel?" Michael asked desperately. "What's it like knowing your name will live on after you're dead?"

"Well," Creed said as thoughtfully (or as thoughtfully as is possible for Creed), "I always thought I would live on through my music."

Michael's face became a weasel-like mask of bafflement. "What music?"

"I used to play with the Grass Roots back in the Sixties," Creed began, "we played with Hendrix, Janis Joplin..."

"_Whatever_," Michael interrupted. "Just tell me what it feels like to find out you're going to be a father."

"It's a_mazing_," Creed said simply, "and terrifying."

"Really?" Michael asked, eyes wide.

Creed nodded. "When I got that letter saying that it was either me or the drummer... my mind was blown."

Michael looked at Creed as though he had suddenly transubstantiated into cricket dung. "Why did I come to you for help? Why would anyone talk to you?"

Creed merely shrugged, having been wondering that himself.

----

Dwight: Of the many labors that I have had to face on the harsh road to becoming a father, this is the one I most wish I could avoid.

He gestures to the Schrute farmhouse behind him.

Dwight: But, I can't escape it anymore than I can escape being a father.

Pause.

Dwight: I mean, it just isn't practical.

----

Dwight looked across room at each of his cousins in turn.

They had been his friends, his allies, and his most constant companions for his entire life. Why, he couldn't turn a corner anywhere in this vast and ancient farmhouse without finding a memory... a trinket given one year on the eve of the Solistice, a nick in the wall made during a youthful round of emergency self-defense awaredness training... the Schrutes were indeed a numerous brood and everything about this house was a testament to their proud legacy. To be a Schrute was to forever know that you were part of something larger and more power than you could ever be alone. It was like being part of a virus colony.

After making sure that every member of his noble family was accounted for, Dwight was ready to begin. He took a deep breath, drew himself up to his full height and spoke to them as one.

"Everyone," he broadcasted "get the hell out."

----

Dwight: Most of the items on this list are for myself or progeny... but this one was for Angela.

Pause.

Dwight: She was quite clear about how she felt about my family and what needed to be done.

Sad pause.

Dwight: It probably started when she found about Mose's "collection."

----

It was a sad truth observable by anyone who knew Michael Scott that when he reached the point of deepest desperation... when every other possible avenue turned failed, he always found himself turning to one man.

"Toby," Michael began, "you're a father, right?"

"You've met Sasha, Michael..." Toby replied weakly, not knowing where this was going, but not at all pleased with what he had seen so far.

Michael nodded. "And you know she's yours?"

Toby had his doubts, but he wasn't about to admit that to Michael. "Michael, what's this all about?"

"I just been thinking about my legacy," Michael answered with wistful honesty, "I mean, obviously my employees will tell their children what a great manager I was and how funny I was, but..." he looked Toby dead in the eyes "...I just don't know if I'll ever be a father myself."

There was a funeral silence that was unbearably uncomfortable, but could not possibly last long enough.

In the end, though, Toby could not escape the inevitable. "I thought Jan wanted children," he began cautiously.

Michael shook his head. "It was never that important to her..."

"She broke up her marriage over it," Toby murmured.

Michael raised a wary eyebrow. "I never told you that." If Toby had been spying on him...

"Jan told me that..." Toby explained. "... the night that it happened."

Michael went in for the killing stare. "I would have thought the first person she would have gone to would have been a trained professional." He twisted the knife. "Or a_ friend_."

Toby took a long blink, hoping in vain that Michael Scott wouldn't be there when it ended. "I'm _both_," he replied with characteristic sanity.

"Uh-huh," Michael nodded, clearly unconvinced.

----

Toby: Actually, this wasn't the only job offer I got.

Pause.

Toby: The job with Gaunt Associates would have been more money, _much_ better health care plan, greater chance for advancement...

Pause.

Toby: ...But it was in New York and I was in a pretty serious relationship at the time, so... I took the job in Dunder-Mifflin and got to stay in Scranton.

He smiles with an odd certainty.

Toby: Six months later, I married that girl.

After a lingering moment, his smile falls to the ground and shatters.

----

"Hey, Dwight," Pam said as the salesman walked back into the office.

Dwight nodded bleakly.

Pam wondered if he was going to be sick down his shirt. "How did the fatherhood missions go?" she asked.

Dwight took a deep, labored breath, looking for all the world like a man with several large planets on his shoulders. "I've already had to do so many things today that I thought might break me," he answered, "and it hasn't even begun yet, Pam." He gave her a look that she knew would chill until the end of her days. "But I guess it's all part of being a man."

"Uh-huh," Pam nodded, "did you get me a copy of 'Buffy' when you went to the comic book store?"

Dwight reached into the bag. "It's not the variant," he cautioned.

Pam shrugged. "I don't care."

Dwight snorted at her ignorance and handed her the book.

"Hey," Oscar began, approaching Dwight casually, "I don't know if you and Angela have been talking about names yet... but if the baby's a boy, have you thought about 'Augustus?'"

Dwight didn't normally take advice from homosexuals, but this one gave him pause. "I'd been thinking 'Sirius' or 'Aragorn'... but that's _much_ better," he admitted.

Oscar smiled and slapped Dwight lightly on the back. "Glad you like it."

Dwight nodded and offered his thanks.

Newly steeled, Dwight turned and began to make his way towards Michael's office. There was one item on his list he'd been looking forward to all day.

----

Michael had deflated all over his desk like a spent condom.

He had always been aware, of course that men only had so many seeds to shoot, but somehow I had always assumed that any day now that perfect woman would walk right up to him and ask him to start a family.

A lifetime of waiting for that moment and here he was in his early mid-forties, his goal vanished beyond the horizon.

"Michael?"

And _now_ he had to talk to Dwight.

Dwight rushed up to him and began speaking in hushed, excited tones. "Angela and I have been talking, and..." They had been talking quite a bit, actually, but this was one point on which Dwight was unshakeable.

"What is it, _Dwight_?" Michael asked, his tone bespeaking a lifetime's worth of irritation.

"Michael," Dwight said, smiling for the first time in weeks, "we would like you to be the godfather of our child."

And just like that, Michael's heart expanded within his chest and he felt better than he had since INS caught up with that Guatamalan janitor he fired.

"Will you do it?" Dwight asked, his eyes the size of saucers.

"_Of course_," Michael replied, his mind still blown away by the enormity of it all. "Of course I will, buddy."

"_Michael_," Dwight nearly prayed as he crushed his boss in a jubilant hug.

And the moment was broken. "Damn it, Dwight! Stop touching me!"

----

Michael, bursting with pride: Godfather.

Does several seconds of horrendous Brando impressions before breaking down laughing.

Michael: It's a big responsibility. If anything happens to Dwight and Angela, it will be up to _me_ to raise that child.

He smiles with an almost mad glee at the mere thought of it.

Michael, to himself: It will all be up to me...

----

Buffy Summers will be back in "**Karen the Jim Slayer**"

Creed: Oh, I joined the Watcher's Council in about '68. Spend quite a few years in England, training potential slayers to battle the forces of darkness...

Pause.

Creed: They don't actually let me _near_ the girls anymore, but...


End file.
